Thursday, June 25, 2015

Six Ways My Child is Teaching Me How to Be Forty (at The Mid)

I’m turning forty in less than forty hours. Preparation has
begun in earnest. I’ve purchased night cream. I’ve begun to learn the art of
tying scarves. I’ve made a list of disastrous-for-my-health foods that I can no
longer eat. I’ve done a thorough examination of my scalp in search of the first
gray hair. I’ve started reading faster so I can get though every last book I
want to read in my life.

I’ve actually begun to feel wise. Not in a Gandalf sort of
way, but in a worldly-urban-woman-hitting-my-stride sort of way. And then it
hit me: I am not wiser because I’m (almost) forty. I’m wiser because my
three-year-old daughter—for whom middle age is not even an abstract
concept much less something she can spell—has taught me a lot of stuff.